International Law Studies, a journal published by the U.S. Naval War College recently featured an article by ICRC authors, The Updated Commentary on the First Geneva Convention – A New Tool for Generating Respect for International Humanitarian Law.

Since their publication in the 1950s and the 1980s respectively, the Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 have become a major reference for the application and interpretation of these treaties. The ICRC, together with a team of renowned experts, is currently updating these Commentaries in order to document developments and provide up-to-date interpretations. The work on the first updated Commentary, the Commentary on the First Geneva Convention relating to the protection of the wounded and sick in the armed forces, has already been finalized. This article provides an overview of the methodology and process of the update and summarizes the main evolutions in the interpretation of the treaty norms reflected in the updated commentary.

INTERCROSS

Intercross is the blog of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Washington D.C.. It is a place for timely news, commentary on armed conflict and violence, humanitarian action, and the rules of war.

Intercross was started in 2011 as a blog and morphed into a podcast-only site in December 2018. (We are no longer actively adding blog content to the site, however you can still peruse our archive of rich content from the beginning here.)

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